"I would never let my child cross a street in Beijing alone," said the researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

"The transportation situation in Beijing is just too dangerous for a child," she explained.

It is, indeed, true that many parents in China's urban areas dare not ease their vigilance when it comes to the safety of their children.

Statistics reveal that 50 children are killed in accidents every day across the country on average, and traffic mishaps top the list of accidents taking young lives.

"Road traffic in China is much more dangerous than it was in the past," said Liu Xiuying, an expert with China Youth and Children Research Centre, noting that this is a major reason for parents' accompanying their children to school.

Cities have been growing over the past decade, and increasing number of people are buying cars.

In Beijing alone, the number of privately owned vehicles exceeded 2.4 million by the end of 2003.

Among the new purchasers of vehicles, many are inexperienced drivers who are mocked as "street killers."

Although the municipality's government has been making efforts to reduce the number of traffic accidents, the incidence of injuries and deaths has not dropped.

Statistics reveal that in 2003, a total of 104,372 people were killed in traffic accidents nationwide, and 494,174 injured, some of them for life.

Chen Fanmin, headmaster of Beijing Dongba Central Primary School, said that in the past year, about 10 students in his school and from nearby schools have been hurt in traffic accidents.

"The road in front of our school was widened a few years ago and now the school stands beside a busy crosswalk," said Chen.

Five hundred primary school students have to be very careful crossing the street every day, as there are no convenient overpasses in the area, he said.

"The school lectures the students on traffic safety issues once every month, but instructions are mostly oral, with little in the way of practical guidance," he said.

Parents, of course, also caution their children, telling them to pay attention to passing vehicles when crossing a street and not to play on the streets, he added.

But, in fact, there are a lot of things that students should know, beyond these simple warnings.

In an instruction base built for a pilot project initiated by the All-China Youth Federation in Beijing, a hundred students were for the very first time to learn about such things as the fact that vehicles cannot stop immediately, but require a distance to do so, depending on vehicle speed and driver reaction time.

This is something most primary school students are totally unaware of.

"My teachers and parents have never told me things like this. They just tell me to watch for passing vehicles," said Zhu Shenpeng, a 11-year-old boy.

In the 11,000-square-metre instruction facility, they are also taught about the different traffic signs, the structure of vehicles, automobile signals and traffic regulations.

Chen Fanmin, who led the students and some parents to the base on Tuesday, said the display boards, the videos and the simulated traffic situations on roads inside the base all give the children "a direct sense of what traffic safety really is."

The base has utilized the successful experience in Hong Kong and Shenzhen in building its simulated traffic system. Students there can even drive electricity-powered vehicles to experience situations that might happen on a real street.

The base also provides psychological consulting and teaches primary first-aid skills.

"We plan to send all our students to the base, in four separate groups. In addition, we will start to use the textbooks provided by the base to teach students more about traffic safety," Chen said.

The present curriculum set by the education administration has no course on traffic safety and self-protection.

Teachers usually give students road-safety instructions on a voluntary basis.

However, there is a good sign prophesying safety on the road ahead. The Ministry of Education issued a document earlier this year, requiring that traffic safety courses be added to the curriculum.